EirGrid’s original ‘Grid 25’ strategy planned on spending €4.2B to construct over 1500 pylon towers in Ireland. Three key projects that were highlighted as critical included the ‘Grid Link’ project, the ‘Grid West’ project and the ‘North-South interconnector’ (Fig 1). These projects were planned to impact 21 counties.

The main project – Grid Link, which planned to construct over 750 pylons across 11 counties has been scrapped in 2015. This week EirGrid announced that Grid West, involving over 240 400kv pylons is also being scrapped. This means that 16 of the original counties planned to be affected will no longer receive any new extra high voltage pylons.

Eirgrid also announced in its 2017 Grid strategy update that there is a 32% reduction in electricity requirement for 2025 versus its original estimates.

Yet the North-South interconnector remains unchanged and untouched.

NEPPC wishes to make 2 points in relation to the latest strategy U-turn:

The credibility of EirGrid in terms of Grid strategy is completely undermined by the latest announcement about Grid West. How can the public have any belief in any of the company’s statements regarding the N-S interconnector?

It is clear that political pressure has been brought to bear in relation to Grid Link and Grid West. That being the case why is there such feeble acceptance of the N-S interconnector by our current Government elected representatives in the North-East? It is time for some unified action spearheaded by the 4 Ministers in the North-East. There are no longer any hiding places. It is time for the Ministers’ to decide if they will stand alongside their constituents or alongside EirGrid.